Today I welcome Justin Mann author of “Black Insecurity at the End of the World.”
Justin L. Mann is an assistant professor of English and African American Studies at Northwestern University. He has research and teaching interests in African American literature, Black feminist theory, Black speculative fiction, and security policy. His current book project, Breaking the World: Black Insecurity after the New World Order argues that Black speculative fictions are a critical but overlooked archive for understanding America’s security ambitions since the Reagan Administration. Bringing works by Octavia E. Butler, Walter Mosley, Colson Whitehead, and N.K. Jemisin (among others) into conversation with “white papers” Breaking The World argues that Black speculation rejects the false promises of securitization by figuring insecurity as a central mode for making political and social worlds. In his recent article “Black Insecurity at the End of the World,” published in Oct by MELUS, Dr. Mann examines the racialization of disease in Colson Whitehead’s zombie novel, Zone One, arguing that the novel offers different and distinct frames for understanding how disease maps onto logic of racial difference. Dr. Mann’s work has also appeared in the journals Feminist Theory, Surveillance & Society, Feminist Studies, and elsewhere.